She’s a 16-year-old girl, returning home from school. Along the way, she needs to go to the bathroom and home’s still a bit of a distance away. So she goes into a public bathroom. No one could have anticipated that such an everyday incident would result in five people dead, curfew for days and the teenaged girl in police custody. Yet that’s exactly how events panned out in Handwara.

What has followed are allegations and counter-allegations, from the Army, the police, the girl’s family and activists. With the girl in custody (along with her father and aunt) and strict curfew in place, it’s been impossible for journalists to verify any of the claims. Their movements have been restricted and to enter Handwara has been extremely difficult because there’s a combination of police and Army on the ground. The standard line from the police is that press is being kept away from Handwara because there could be law and order problems. However, as a result of this severely limited access, all we have to go by are conflicting claims. Here are the two public statements, by the police and the girl’s mother.

Yesterday, five days after the first incidents of violence in Handwara, the young girl who is at the centre of this controversy — all because she used a public bathroom — recorded her statement before the Chief Judicial Magistrate. A police statement was issued soon after, which said,

“In her statement before the judicial magistrate, she reveals that on 12-04-2016, after school hours while proceeding to her home along with her friends, she entered a public lavatory near main chowk Handwara for answering the call of nature. As soon as she came out of the lavatory, she was confronted, assaulted and dragged by two boys and her bag was snatched.”

The police statement suggests that the confusion arose because one of the boys “was in uniform” (meaning a school uniform). This appeared to conclusively prove that no Army personnel was involved in this episode. As India TodayTV’s Shiv Aroor said in a series of tweets, the testimony suggested that the recent violence at Handwara was a “textbook example of separatists and trouble-makers using crime committed by a local to tar the Army and brew tensions.”

However, the girl’s mother has questioned whether the testimony was made freely. In a cutting and no-holds-barred statement of her own, the girl’s mother said:

“When the girl was returning home after school, she went to a bathroom and was followed by an Army man. When she saw the Army man she raised an alarm, attracting attention of the nearby shopkeepers. The policemen also came to the scene but the Army man fled. The girl, just 16 years, was then taken to a police station without informing the family.

Simultaneously, stone pelting started in the area. If someone is asking why the locals resorted to stone pelting. I want to tell them that when they saw their Muslim sister in such a situation, how could they have tolerated? Then the police and Army resorted to firing and martyred two boys. They were my sons too and I am pained.

We don’t have any information about my arrested daughter for the last five days. We were even not allowed to meet her. However, on April 12, at around midnight, we received a call and the policeman asked us to come to the police station to take the girl home. We asked was it justified to take the girl and lodge her in the police station? Which law is this? The law says that the girl cannot be detained alone at a police station after 6pm and my daughter was all alone? Then her statement was recorded. She was alone while that statement was recorded and she was pressurized by police to give that statement. Her face was kept open while recording that statement and it was distributed to TV channels and other mediums.

When we reached police station around 1am, her father and an aunt were also detained. We are very grateful to our brethren who raised their voice to save my daughter and so that such an incident is not repeated. We have approached the court and demand an independent inquiry into the incident. We do not want police or Army – those who have done this – to inquire it. How can they investigate it when they have murdered the people? Our daughter was defamed. We want our dignity back.”

With curfew as well as restrictions on mobile internet following the rounds of violence in Handwara, the crackdown has been described as unprecedented. Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, which is representing the family of the girl who was harassed, has complained that their office was sealed on Saturday morning, just before a scheduled press conference in which the girl’s mother was to make her statement. Reporters were not allowed to enter the JKCCS office. The police offered no explanation for not allowing the press conference.
(With inputs from Safeena Wani.)